Recently I became worried when I saw little Cthulhu-themed toys appearing as geeky gifts. Small plastic creatures from the netherworlds of H.P. Lovecraft should stay where they belong. However, with Lovecraftian horror making a comeback of late, perhaps I was a bit hasty in my assessment of these strange little tsotchkes. Maybe there's room in the realms of the Old Ones and the Deep Ones to ensnare unsuspecting victims new blood a new generation of fans by enticing them with toys!
In that vein, I recently had the opportunity to review a new Lovecraft-inspired graphic novel from author Bruce Brown and illustrator Renzo Podesta - Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom. The title sounds so innocuous... and when you see the cover with a boy and this strange looking green creature, you wonder what kind of a journey this kid might be taking...
Young Howard Lovecraft begins the adventure by going to the Butler Sanitarium with his mother to visit his father Winfield Lovecraft, a patient there. The first panel of the chapter quotes Edgar Allen Poe - "Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak december, and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor." The line is from Poe's classic work "The Raven," which perfectly sets the stage for delving into Lovecraftian horror. From that point forward, Brown had me in his clutches.
It's Christmas Eve, 1894, and the mother and son have come to see the father, driven mad by something he'd done. Howard's father goes into a spasm of paranoia and fear, begging his son to destroy a book that he should have never written. The boy doesn't scream during the incident, but does go home with a small gift - a paper star made by his father.
Once home, Howard's mother gives him a book - an early Christmas present from his father. As he begins to read it, he's drawn into a dark, cold world of magic and deceit. The book tells of a place - R'yleh - a "kingdom described as an unholy marriage of fairy tales and nightmares." Unwittingly, the boy reads a few words written in the book in a strange language - and is sucked through a whole in the fabric of the universe.
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